Honeymoon- Day 2

Before heading to breakfast in the morning, we wanted to shower. It was a walk-in style, so half it had a frosty glass wall, and the other half had a curtain to cover the opening where you step in over a 1-2 inch lip. Patrick had already gotten in while I stood at the sink putting in my contacts, when all of a sudden, I hear a shriek. After quickly turning around, I see him pressed up against the glass in a really tight corner. Turns out, the shower spits out SCALDING water every few minutes. The fancy shower head can't be turned, so we were forced to jump out of the water and hug the walls multiple times to avoid burned skin. To top matters, the drain didn't work well so water overflowed all over the bathroom floor, consuming all our towels. We left a note for the cleaning staff, and told a clerk at the front desk, but neither flaw was fixed the next morning....

At least we found the humor in it, so we headed to breakfast still in a good mood and with voucher in hand. It got each of us an orange juice, coffee, water, bagel & cream cheese, and yogurt. Several times throughout the meal, Patrick expressed that his bagel was really tough. I figured he was just being picky since mine was fine, and finally said, "Let me taste it," to prove to him it was fine. I couldn't get my teeth through it- granted it left a nice mold of my jaw on the bread. Luckily we got it exchanged w/o issue.

Since it was a rainy day, we went to the City Museum, which was actually more like a giant playground. It was void of many exhibits, but had a huge area devoted to tunnels, bridges, stairs, and a slide that spanned about 6 stories, all made primarily of recycled materials.

We had to get down on hands, knees, butts, and bellies to get through a lot of areas!

Patrick emerging from a tunnel opening surrounded by gloves that added some resistance.

Within the museum there was also an aquarium where we pet stingrays, sharks, a horseshoe crab, a macaw and a parrot, rabbits, turtles, and could crawl in glass tubes that went through some of the tanks. We saw a couple other interesting things too:

Got to this lizard's cage just in time for a rat feeding! Sorry to those of you who are grossed out, but when you forget about the morbidity, it's kind of cool!

A two-headed snake! I believe we also saw a two-headed turtle in another cage.

I stopped to help this guy lift a stone, but it was a bit heavy for us. I eventually gave up and went to explore some more with Patrick. A circus school that teaches everyday-average-Joes how to perform, gives their students practice performing on the weekends in a small arena housed in the museum, so we had a free show! It certainly wasn't Cirque du Soleil caliber, but it was interesting to watch normal looking people display hand-balancing, flexibility and juggling beyond normal skill.

Afterward, we entered a photo booth to get a film strip- I was really excited about it because we had never done that before and I thought it would be a neat souvenir! However, as soon as we were out, a lady and her 4 invasive kids got in our space. They said they'd wait to use the booth until our pictures spit out, but after about 20 seconds they crammed past us and got in anyway. (Rolling my eyes.) That kinda took some of the fun out of it.

It didn't help that we were really hungry again. So we left the museum in search of food. We had planned on dressing up and going to a fancy restaurant on the top of a hotel with a rotating roof offering a 360-degree view of the city- totally stoked about it. But, unfortunately it was the ONLY day of the week it was closed, which majorly bummed me out since I had really looked forward to that. We walked around downtown for a while until we found a pub-style sports bar/grill, but we couldn't see any open seats. After spending a couple minutes looking lost, we stopped a waitress and asked her if there were any open seats. She said she didn't know and walked away. After walking to the other end of the place only to stand (no open seats), finding menus for ourselves, and getting ignored by the service some more, we left that place in a rather aggravated state-of-mind.

Since a lot of places were closed, we ended up going to Schlafly again (but a smaller, second location) for a decent dinner and to fill a growler for our friends Pat & Jackie. The museum tired us out, so we went to the hotel to recuperate for a few hours, then went out for a late-night dessert at Bailey's Chocolate Bar. The atmosphere would have been romantic with its dimmed lights, and roses and candles at each table, except the place was about 95% empty, our waiter wasn't overly friendly or engaging, and the food was drastically overpriced. But, we did have probably the best cup of coffee we can ever remember, and that goes a long way. Patrick's apple dumpling with vanilla ice cream, and my flourless brownie (not sure how that's made- but the idea intrigued and delighted me) with coffee ice cream tasted pretty good too- but like I said about the price, the bill/tip was bordering $40 for just coffee & dessert!

Sorry for being so long- I'm always long-winded, but I have additional excuses this time. 1) I'm being pretty detailed to document the honeymoon for myself, and 2) my dad is printing these blog entries to send to my sister at BASIC training (she really looks forward to mail, so I want to keep her updated and entertained). In any case, I hope you were entertained too :), and maybe you can start to see why the honeymoon was a mix of fun & frustration. Segment 3 to follow soon....

"Honeymoon"- Day 1

We are so glad we were able to see everyone for the wedding, and appreciate you traveling to be a part of it! During this last week, we've been saying bye to people leaving town, taking care of bills and laundry, and getting used to our new "husband and wife" titles. :)

While Patrick and I would have ideally visited South America and hiked to Machu Picchu for our honeymoon, we settled for a vacation closer to home that we could afford. St. Louis seemed to fit the bill, and although we were originally disappointed when we had to trim our 1 week plan down to 3 days (after we realized anything more would be out of our budget), that probably ended up being a good thing.

Our honeymoon wasn't quite what we expected. Just not as romantic, smooth, or as planned as we had hoped (which affects our patience and attitudes in less than pleasant ways too), like our Branson trip in the fall had been. We are still happy we had the time away to help us make the transition from the dominating "PLAN WEDDING" mindset, to one more focused on our relationship and having some time together before going back to everyday life. And the trip definitely wasn't all bad either, as you'll see below and in the posts to come!

Our first stop after arriving in St. Louis Saturday afternoon was Schlafly Bottleworks- a craft brewery well-known in the area. Before taking a tour of the facility, we ordered a few wares to try. We made a quick stop to REI afterward, where we bought a paddle and life jacket, meaning we are now equipped to take our new kayak out (hopefully this coming weekend!). :)

We arrived at Hotel Indigo a few hours after check-in, but we received a voucher for a free breakfast for 2 because of the "inconvenience" of having to wait at the front desk a couple minutes while they made sure the room was ready. (Awesome!)

As you can see, the room has a fun atmosphere, with some really swanky touches, like salon brand toiletries. I forgot my hair-pick though, and unfortunately the free comb I got at the front desk was not so high-end (took way too long to untangle my long hair).

We were pretty hungry when we left for dinner at The Hill (a designation for an area of town with lots of Italian restaurants- highly recommended for dining), but decided to risk the estimated hour long wait since it'd probably take just as long to randomly choose a different restaurant and wait there. Ended up being longer than that, so in addition to being cranky by the time we were seated, we weren't feeling too good either. I was worried we'd shock our barren stomachs, and while the food was delicious, our digestion was definitely a little odd the rest of the trip.... which you can find out about soon in the next post!

Senior Citizen in the driveway

It's official, Doris now qualifies for senior discounts! She hit the 100k mile mark on Battlefield St. while we were on our way to try out a little ice cream shop (no offense to Andy's Frozen Custard, we just wanted some ice cream). We hit 70,000 our first week here so that's 30,000 miles we've traveled since moving down to Springfield, not bad for driving back and forth to Michigan a dozen times. We haven't heard any odd noises or had anything catastrophic happen, but we're keeping our fingers crossed just in case...

Don't worry, I wasn't speeding!

Other updates:
The wedding, as you all know, is coming up shortly and as you can imagine, we're pretty busy getting all our ducks in a row.
Atalie has not had any work for the past week and it looks like she won't for a while, so we're living on my meager paycheck at the moment- yay!

Steel Creek Hiking

This weekend we took a break from the wedding planning to try and regain a little sanity. It was very welcome! The weather was chilly- mid-20s during the day and mid-teens at night- but we managed to stay (mostly) warm. The hiking itself was pretty hard due to the fact that we were carrying too much stuff and we haven't done it in a while, but the scenery made up for the sore and tired muscles.
(The pictures are all out of order because Blogger is crap and loads them in reverse order)

A beautiful Sunday morning hike out.

Atalie at an overlook of the Buffalo River. Right behind her in the valley is Steel Creek campground.
Patrick at the Steel Creek campground for a quick break- we ended up coming back here to camp Saturday night.
Just before we headed out Saturday morning.

The group on the trail.

Old news by now...

So this is probably old news by now, but to anyone who (for some reason) doesn't know this, we're getting married on March 20, 2010!
We have a website that we've set up through theknot.com where you can check out ALL the details. For those of you interested, we'll get it updated with registry stuff in the near future.

http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/AtalieAlbin&PatrickWomble

We will try and keep the blog updated with more info and our mental states as we approach W-day.

Christmas Spoil

Atalie (left) at Christmas in 1989.

Surprisingly, Atalie won despite the two holes in the wall.

This is the dart board painted by Mrs. A. for me.

Mrs. A. made this for Atalie- it's an Aztec calendar that she mounted onto a small table.

Thanks to everyone for a great Christmas!

Back to the grind

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all (belated of course)! I hope everyone got as spoiled as we did over the holidays- our families were very generous! We, as most people around the world, started back to work this week so we ended up driving back to Missouri last Saturday. It turns out that we brought snow and cold back with us. We're bummed that we didn't get to see everyone we wanted to, but are happy we got a chance to visit with the people we did see. Just a short blog tonight, it's late and time to get ready for bed. We'll post pictures of some of the spoil later on this week (hopefully).

Also, wedding plans are kicking up a notch, so keep an ear out for more info... it might be sooner than you think.